“I had a burning desire to see our church run holiday programmes again—it’s a wonderful way to minister to the community, introduce children to Jesus, and to empower those that know and follow Him to invite friends, it’s discipleship training at ground zero!”
Claire Bresler has been serving as Rutland Street Church’s Kidzone Director since 2024—and says that while she was keen to get a programme off the ground, the thought of starting something from scratch was overwhelming.
Then she came across an article about how Mikayla Crawford and the team from The Orchard Church in Te Puke partnered with Word of Life to launch a new approach to running holiday programmes.
The Orchard worked with Word of Life over a number of years to train leaders from within the church’s youth group, helping support the church to eventually start running holiday programmes regularly without external support.
When Claire read the article she laughed, as she knew it was God’s timing! She immediately got up from her desk at Rutland Street to chat with some of the Word of Life team—who also have their offices in the RSC buildings.
“Word of Life's approach is that RSC as a church are to commit to running the programme—so that it is not just seen as ‘just’ a children's ministry event, but rather with the whole church contributing their time and skills. I loved this concept!”
Claire says Word of Life’s commitment to strengthen the relationship between the children’s ministry and the youth ministry was also really helpful. Word of Life provided training for leaders—the majority of whom came from within RSC’s youth group ‘YROC’.
“In the week we ran the programme I was encouraged by seeing how our youth team grew their relationships with one another. The youth did not only hang out with one another, but gave all their time energy and focus to serving the children that attended… What a blessing they were. Witnessing their energy and enthusiasm to serve was humbling and so encouraging!”
The entire church was involved in praying for the programme, with volunteers stepping up to serve in the kitchen, provide barista coffee, meet and greet parents, and make meals for the leader team in the evenings as they did training with the Word of Life team.
Claire says RSC had flyers available for their volunteers to share with parents during the morning coffee time inviting them to explore what the church has to offer beyond the holiday programme, “from this we have seen another four children join the Rally group that meets at our church, which we are of course thrilled about!”
The programme took place over five days in the April school holidays, running from 9am-3pm for children in years 4-8. Claire says they had 49 children attend the programme:
“A highlight for me was seeing our church family serving alongside each other sharing the gospel—knowing that there were children and parents from our children's ministry that had actively gone around their neighbourhood to invite their neighbours to attend, because they are passionate about Jesus and want their friends and neighbours to know Jesus too.
“What a huge blessing too to see our youth step up and serve the Lord, not out of duty, but out of their love for Jesus and compassion for others and desire to see others come to know Christ… It was truly humbling and made me more in love with Jesus for His provision and mighty hand that brought everything together for His glory.
